{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/768",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 768,
    "subject": "Digest whorl.v010.n075",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-01-29T14:44:29+00:00",
    "last": "2000-01-29T14:44:29+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0247@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "pei047 at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-01-29T14:44:29+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n075",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Welcome, Sheila,"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "<relatively new subscriber delurking for a question> On Mucor.\n\nAt WindyCon, GW mentioned at one of his panels\nthat He purposefully put a ghost into the middle\nof one of his novels so that the reader would\nnot expect only science fiction from the novel.\n(The panel was about mixing the genres).\n\nSo perhaps he is mixing sf and the supernatural."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, this remark may have referred to the apparition of Patera Pike (LS1), which has caused a great deal of fingerwork on many keyboards for these archives. (I still think it was Quetzal, though.) As for Mucor, she is certainly uncanny. She is one of the \"special\" gene-spliced embryos put aboard the Whorl at the beginning of the voyage. And she has been somewhat damaged. But I don't think we are exactly meant to think of her as a fantasy figure; it's more that she has developed a special ability."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "When I first read TBLN I thought the Outsider\ngod was supernatural, and the others were\ntechnological, but that is probably naive."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "No, I don't think that is naive; it's as good a way of explaining them as any other. The other gods are computer programs, who can sometimes upload themseves into human beings (posession, just what Mucor does in her own way). But the Outsider is God or a sort of god and (IMPO--p stands for private) may have some Sev in him, though we won't know for a while (if ever). But yes, supernatural."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "...About the Inhumuni secret. I agree with\nwhoever said that the love-thy-neighbor angle\ndoesn't seem to be a good candidate because of\nthe impossibility of implementation. If something\nwere impossible to implement, then I don't think\nthey would consider it a threat. \n\nBut the love-thy-neighbor theory is still\nintriguing and something has to be there. All of\nthe technologically oriented ideas so far seem\nhokey.\n\nOne offshoot of the love idea is to love the\ninhumuni. Maybe this is what saves Horn. Krait\ndrinks his blood, and then Horn loves him. Most\npeople wouldn't. Maybe that's the secret. So it's\na bigger version of love-thy-neighbor (what *is*\nthy neighbor).\n\n*Except* that, again we have the implementation\nproblem (even if maybe it isn't so difficult, \npeople can protect themselves and it doesn't depend\non the actions of other people), and if blood taking\nis required, what protection is there against\ninhumuni who would kill their first time victom\noutright?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I think you are right on the money, and that inhumi who do kill their victims are pretty stupid (except in the case of Horn's inhumu assassins, who are, in effect, soldiers under orders). I think this is \"a\" secret. But I do not think it is \"the\" secret. (Though maybe I'm being too stubborn about this; well, someone has to do it!)\n\n-alga\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}